What It’s Like to Play Through an NFL Contract Year

If we count only game days the NFL regular season is slightly longer than two weeks. There are 16 days, 16 games and 16 Sundays, Mondays or Thursdays to determine which teams are worthy of playing into the postseason.

Primarily, we focus on what those 16 games mean for each team. We concentrate on how the tale of each season is told on a week-to-week basis in 16 three-hour intervals.

We overlook what that means for the individual and the immense pressure fleeting opportunities place on players, especially those who are facing an expiring contract.

Working under a contract may sometimes feel like it’s the one and only way you can relate to an NFL player. The concept isn’t a foreign one, and instead it’s familiar to many hardworking people.

The difference is you have the length of a contract to prove yourself. You can work five days per week for six months or a year, each day growing into a role. That is where any thin thread between NFL players and the everyman ends, just as it always does.

Many players throughout the league are in the final year of their contracts right now and playing through what’s commonly dubbed a “contract year.” The name itself is a lie.

The contract year—which is currently being navigated by top-tier talents such as the Steelers’ Le’Veon Bell and the Bills’ Stephon Gilmore, along with the Redskins’ Kirk Cousins for the second straight season—is one year long only in the sense that an entire year of days on the calendar tick away.

In truth, only 16 of those days matter.

I’m told this is the final step in making it officially official. I am back with the Re… https://t.co/2O8UzxOLU9 pic.twitter.com/EgfhmxkpAV

— Kirk Cousins (@KirkCousins8) March 3, 2016

That number can dwindle even further because of an injury. Then the league offers a mechanism to make a player prove himself all over again, repeating a contract year while under the franchise tag.

The pressure to produce, to win, to lead and to conquer each week is enormous enough under normal circumstances. Toss in the added weight of uncertainty that comes from not knowing where your future lies beyond the next 16 weeks and days, and a contract year can become…

    

A distraction

We often view NFL players as superhuman athletic machines. And physically that’s true, as merely making a roster can require looking like the Michelin Man but moving like the Road Runner.

For those unique talents, they’re paid handsomely. But that gushing money faucet can dry up to a slow drip when a contract year ends. Or it could flow even faster, but to make that happen, the player may have to move across the country.

How a player deals with the uncertainty looming as a contract year begins can depend on his background. Defensive end Derrick Shelby, for example, went undrafted in 2012 out of Utah. He then played sparingly in a reserve role for the Miami Dolphins over three seasons. When fellow defensive end Cameron Wake suffered an injury in 2015, Shelby was given an opportunity, and he pounced on it.

He recorded 3.5 sacks and two forced fumbles despite modest playing time while starting only nine games.

Football powers high above may have been watching over him because the timing was perfect. Shelby was playing through a walk year, and his late-season surge pushed the dollars he saw the following March to another level. The potential he showed in 2015 led to a four-year contract worth $18 million from the Atlanta Falcons, $7.5 million of which is guaranteed.

But the contract year didn’t change him as a player or person. He attributes that to being undrafted, which leads to a permanent sense of inner hunger.

“Each year I was scratching and clawing to make the roster,” Shelby told Bleacher Report. “But if you’re, say, a first-round player who’s been playing well, I can see how [the contract year] would tie into things.

“The thing about football is that it helps you breed mental toughness. You can have the contract weigh on you and affect you. But I think most guys are really good at focusing on the …

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